American Civil War (1861-1865)

The Battle of Bull Run, from "Campfire and Battlefield - A Pictorial Narrative of the Civil War" by Rossiter Johnson, 1894

By Craig Symonds﻿

Overview

In his classic “History of the Peloponnesian War,” Thucydides wrote that the cause of the 20-year conflict between Athens and Sparta was “the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta.”

Southerners were convinced that without new Western lands to employ the growing population of slaves, the market value of the slaves would decline while the cost of sustaining them remained, thereby threatening the viability of the institution itself. Having invested so much, psychologically as well as financially, in the “peculiar institution,” the Southern planter class that dominated Southern governance decided that if the growth of slavery were halted, it must leave the Union.

The four-year war that ensued constituted a political, social and even cultural watershed that virtually remade the nation, strengthening the national government at the expense of the states and encouraging the creation of national markets and transportation systems. Despite the loss of life (estimated at 620,000 dead, as many as in all of America’s other wars combined) and the physical destruction that took place during the war (especially in the Southern states), the Civil War not only ended slavery (though not racial injustice), but it also spawned the conditions that made America a world power.

The Civil War was also the nation’s first “modern” war in that it witnessed the emergence of a variety of new military technologies. The most prominent (and the most deadly) of these was the widespread use of the rifled musket and Minie ball, which increased the range of shoulder arms to nearly 800 yards from about 80 yards. This technology made frontal assaults remarkably dangerous and contributed to the high number of casualties. In addition, the Civil War saw the first general use of the telegraph and the railroad, the ironclad warship and the submarine, and even hot air balloons for observation. In the last year of the war in particular, field armies took to relying on sophisticated entrenchments that foreshadowed the trench warfare of World War I.

When he took office, President Lincoln inherited a fait accompli; seven Southern states had seceded and formed a government. President Lincoln did not believe that secession was constitutionally legitimate; his view was that in a democracy a minority had an obligation to accept the decision of a majority, or else elections had no real meaning. In that respect, the war was a test of the viability of majority rule — indeed, of democracy itself, as President Lincoln made clear in his famous address at Gettysburg. He therefore insisted that the Union remained whole whatever the Southern states might say, which justified his decision to send a relief expedition to Fort Sumter in South Carolina where Maj. Robert Anderson commanded a small North garrison on an island in the middle of Charleston Harbor surrounded now by hostile forces.

President Lincoln notified Gov. Francis W. Pickens of South Carolina that this expedition was on its way, and Pickens passed the information on to President Davis. Determined that the South should begin its experiment in self-government with a decisive statement, President Davis ordered Brig. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard to demand Major Anderson’s surrender, and if the major refused, the general was to reduce Fort Sumter with gunfire. At a few minutes past 4 a.m. on April 12, 1861, the Beauregard forces opened fire.

Only 100 miles separated Richmond from Washington, and many of the great battles of the war were fought between the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in that constricted space. Though from the beginning, public attention focused on the military campaigns in Virginia, the military campaigns in the West — broadly defined as the area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River — were also important, perhaps even decisive, to the war’s outcome.

Finding himself a war president, Lincoln turned to the senior general in the United States Army for military advice. Winfield Scott was a Virginian by birth, but he had been an Army general since 1814, longer than most Americans had been alive, and his loyalty to the Union was never in doubt. He hoped to demonstrate to the Southern states that they were dependent on the Union as a whole for their future success and survival, and to do that he envisioned a three-part plan was subsequently (and derisively) called the Anaconda Plan.

General Scott suggested that the North should focus on three objectives: first, maintain a large field army in that 100-mile corridor between the opposing capitals to tie down enemy forces; second, blockade the Southern coastline with the United States Navy; and third, send expeditions up and down the axis of the Mississippi River to cut off the trans-Mississippi West (Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana) from the rest of the Confederacy.

While General Scott’s hopes for a relatively bloodless war were quickly dashed, his grand strategy nonetheless became a kind of blueprint for the North’s conduct of the war.

Battle of Bull Run

Public opinion, however, was not inclined to wait for the South to appreciate the error of its ways. Patience has never been an American characteristic. Moreover, President Lincoln’s call for volunteers had been based on the 1792 Militia Act that authorized the president to call up the state’s militia for only 90 days, and in July 1861 those 90 days were quickly expiring. He therefore urged Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, the commander of the militia forces gathering near Washington, to undertake an offensive even though that general claimed, rightly enough, that his troops were green.

President Lincoln replied: “You are green, it is true. But they are green also.”

Thus prodded, General McDowell began a forward movement toward the railroad junction at Manassas. The First Battle of Bull Run, which the Confederates called the First Battle of Manassas, took place on July 21, 1861. (Confederates generally named battles after the nearest community, while the North named them after a nearby geographical feature, like a river.) General McDowell sent most of his soldiers on a roundabout march to get around the flank of the Confederate forces commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and General Beauregard.

General McDowell’s turning movement stalled on Henry House Hill where Col. Thomas J. Jackson stood “like a stone wall,” and newly arrived Confederate reinforcements sent the North into a disorganized retreat, allowing the South to claim the first laurels. This first major engagement between enthusiastic volunteers who were imperfectly trained proved that the war would not be won or lost in a single battle.

Blockade of Southern Coast

Meanwhile, the Union Navy was building the force that would be necessary to execute President Lincoln’s declared blockade of the Southern coast. The Navy underwent an expansion to more than 600 warships from about only 90, and the blockade, porous at first, grew increasingly effective. Though about 75 percent of the blockade runners who tried to get through the blockade did so successfully, far fewer of them tried once the blockade was in place, so that the total amount of trade in and out of the Southern states declined precipitously to as little as 15 percent of its prewar levels. The blockade had relatively little impact on the major battles ashore, for the South did manage to import sufficient arms and power to keep its soldiers supplied, but it had a long-term corrosive effect on the overall Confederate economy and contributed to both shortages and inflation.

To sustain the blockade, the North needed coaling and support stations along the South Atlantic coast. In November 1861, Flag Officer Samuel F. Du Pont’s fleet of steam-powered warships successfully seized Port Royal, S.C., thus demonstrating how modern steam-powered warships could overcome hastily erected shore defenses as well as giving the Union its first taste of victory. In consequence, the Confederacy decided to abandon any serious effort to defend its coast except at half a dozen ports: Galveston, Tex.; New Orleans; Mobile, Ala.; Savannah, Ga.; Charleston, S.C.; and Wilmington, N.C.

Unable to break the blockade by force, the Confederacy countered with a handful of mostly English-built commerce raiders, including the C.S.S. Alabama commanded by Rear Adm. Raphael Semmes. Collectively, these raiders captured or destroyed 284 Northern merchant ships during the war, which sent maritime insurance rates soaring and led many Northern merchants to re-flag their vessels to avoid being targeted. Though the United States Navy eventually caught up with most of these raiders — including a sea duel off the coast of France in which the U.S.S. Kearsarge sank the Alabama — the rebel raiders were a constant aggravation to the Union.

Western Battles

The Navy also played a role in more western battles: on the Tennessee, Cumberland and Mississippi Rivers. On Feb. 6, 1862, a four-ship squadron of ironclad gunboats commanded by Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote, attacked and overwhelmed Confederate Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Ten days later, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. These relatively small actions had large strategic consequences as they gave Union forces control of both the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, which provided avenues of approach that the Union used to penetrate deep into the Confederate heartland, and which also cut the Confederate’s east-west rail communications.

Confederate forces in Tennessee fell back all the way into northern Mississippi. In April, a combined Army-Navy team secured the fall of the Confederate bastion of Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River, and that same month, Flag Officer David G. Farragut ran past the forts guarding the approach to New Orleans and captured that city, the largest in the Confederacy.

One of the reasons Farragut found so little opposition at New Orleans was that the Confederates were consolidating their forces in the West for a counterstrike at the Grant forces. After seizing the river forts on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, General Grant had moved upstream (southward) on the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing near a small country church called Shiloh. There, on April 6, 1862, Confederate forces under Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston caught him by surprise, and in a furious dawn assault nearly drove his army into the river. The next morning Grant counterattacked and won back all the ground he had lost. Shiloh was the first battle that foreshadowed just how bloody the Civil War was likely to be as nearly 24,000 men fell killed, wounded and captured in the two days of fighting, seven times the losses at Bull Run-Manassas.

Battling For Richmond

After the shock and disappointment of Bull Run-Manassas, Union forces in the East reorganized. General McDowell was supplanted by a confident young general named George B. McClellan, who commanded not only the Army of the Potomac, but also all Union armies, supplanting General Scott in that role in November. After spending the winter drilling and training his forces, General McClellan sought to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond in the spring of 1862 by means of a large amphibious movement to Fort Monroe at the tip of the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers, hence its designation as the Peninsular Campaign.

His plan was nearly undone by a single warship. The C.S.S. Virginia, built atop the partly burned hull of the U.S.S. Merrimack — which had been abandoned when the North evacuated Norfolk — was the South’s first and most famous ironclad. It sortied into Hampton Roads near Fort Monroe on March 8, 1862, and sank two wooden Union warships. That night the Union’s own ironclad, U.S.S. Monitor, arrived in Hampton Roads, and the next day (March 9) it fought the Merrimack-Virginia to a standstill, allowing the Union landings at Fort Monroe to continue.

General McClellan was a cautious commander who was reluctant to press ahead until he had all the elements of his vast army in position. He was annoyed that President Lincoln decided to keep Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s corps in Washington after the president learned just how weak General McClellan’s move to the Virginia Peninsula left the defenses of the national capital. It was the first important dispute between the president and his field general, but not the last.

Though the Confederate forces opposing General McClellan on the Peninsula were at first very weak, the general’s continuing delay gave them a chance to gather reinforcements so that by late May, the Confederate Army under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston outside Richmond was nearly as strong as his own. General Johnston attacked a segment of the McClellan army at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862, but though the Confederates pushed the North’s forces back a mile or so, the attack failed to achieve the decisive success the South needed to reverse the momentum.

One important result, however, was that General Johnston himself was badly wounded, and to replace him, Jefferson Davis chose Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Seven Days Battles

General Lee called upon reinforcements from the Stonewall Jackson forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson, now a general, had been running Union forces ragged, keeping a force three times the size of his own pinned down there. General Jackson moved his men by rail to join General Lee outside Richmond for a counterattack against General McClellan. In what became known as the Seven Days Battles (June 25 to July 1, 1862), the Lee forces struck again and again at the McClellan army. None of the Lee-led attacks can fairly be labeled a victory, but they affected General McClellan’s attitude and behavior.

Believing that he was badly outnumbered (he wasn’t), General McClellan withdrew his army to an enclave around Harrison’s Landing on the banks of the James River, where it could be protected by the heavy guns of the Navy warships.

The battles were costly: the Lee army had more than 20,000 casualties; the McClellan army had about 15,000 casualties.

But General McClellan’s will was shattered. He called for reinforcements, and then more reinforcements, until President Lincoln told him he had better bring the army back to Washington.

Second Battle of Bull Run

Meanwhile, the Union had managed to field another army near Washington (the Army of Virginia) under Maj. Gen. John Pope, who had been credited with the victory at Island No. 10 in the West. Once it was clear that General McClellan was withdrawing from the peninsula, General Lee first sent General Jackson, and then Gen. James Longstreet, to face this new threat. In the Second Battle of Bull Run-Manassas (Aug. 30, 1862), the Jackson and Longstreet forces won a clear victory over the Pope troops and gained the initiative in the campaign. To maintain the momentum, General Lee decided to take his now-unified army across the Potomac into Maryland where he hoped to attract new recruits and relieve his beloved Virginia of the burden of sustaining the armies.

In a twist of fate, a soldier from the North found a copy of General Lee’s orders (Order No. 191) in a field near Frederick, Md., and as a result, General McClellan learned not only where Lee was, but also where he was going. Infused with (for him) unusual alacrity, General McClellan started off in pursuit, fighting his way past delaying battles in the gaps of South Mountain until he arrived on the banks of Antietam Creek in western Maryland overlooking the Lee army, which was occupying the small town of Sharpsburg. General Lee knew that General McClellan was coming, but he remained in place to reunify his scattered forces and secure the surrender of the North’s arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Learning that Harpers Ferry had fallen, and that his army would soon be united, General Lee decided to remain in Sharpsburg and accept the McClellan forces’ attack. It was a bold and risky decision, but even though he would be badly outnumbered, General Lee was confident in the fighting prowess of his soldiers.

Antietam

The day of the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) on Sept. 17, 1862, was the single bloodiest day of the Civil War, and remains the single bloodiest day in American military history. More than 22,000 men fell that day, 3,654 of them killed outright.

General McClellan had overwhelming numerical superiority, but he threw that advantage away by sending his divisions into the fight one at a time, and late in the day when he might have applied the coup de grâce by sending in Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter’s V Corps, he kept it as a reserve in case of a disaster. Most scholars believe that the commitment of the Porter Corps would have brought about a decisive victory and possibly shortened the war. Instead, General Lee was able to hang on until nightfall, and after a quiet day on Sept. 18, he “escaped” across the Potomac back into Virginia.

Emancipation Proclamation (Preliminary)

One important consequence of this battle, however, was that it provided President Lincoln with the impetus to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. He had planned to issue it sooner, but had been convinced by Secretary of State William H. Seward that he should wait until a Union victory so that it would not appear to be an act of desperation. Calling it a war measure, President Lincoln declared on Sept. 22 that any areas that remained in rebellion as of Jan. 1, 1863, would forfeit the right to hold slaves — slaves in those areas, he declared, would become free. Of course, President Lincoln would not be able to enforce his declaration unless the North won the war, but if the North did win, slavery would now almost certainly expire. One important element of the January Proclamation was that it authorized the enlistment of black soldiers.

This has led to some discussion among historians about President Lincoln’s central motive: Did he fight the war to free the slaves, or free the slaves to fight the war? There is no reason the answer cannot be that he did both, but it is clear that by late 1862, the momentum of war had provided President Lincoln with an opportunity to strike at slavery more boldly that he had imagined would be possible when he took office.

General McClellan Dismissed

Meanwhile, President Lincoln was running out of patience with General McClellan. After Antietam, “the Little Napoleon” relapsed into his habit of moving slowly and calling for reinforcements. In October 1862, the president dismissed him and replaced him with Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. That officer, knowing that the president expected results, led the North’s army to the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg hoping to get around the Lee forces’ right flank. He might have done so had the pontoon bridging equipment he had requested arrived in time. But it did not, and that gave General Lee the time he needed to get his men into position. The ensuing Battle of Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) was a disaster for the North, as wave after wave of blue-clad soldiers stormed up Marye’s Heights behind Fredericksburg trying to break through the Confederate line. By the end of the day, some 12,000 soldiers from the North were dead or wounded on that hillside, while Confederate losses totaled “only” about 5,000.

The year 1862 ended on a sanguinary note in the West, too. In the fall, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg (who had replaced General Beauregard) used the South’s rail system to transfer his army from Mississippi to Tennessee, then started north into Kentucky. His “invasion” was turned back at the Battle of Perryville (Oct. 8, 1862), and General Bragg withdrew to middle Tennessee. He was assailed there by a new North commander, William S. Rosecrans, in the Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro) on the last day of 1862.

General Bragg anticipated the Rosecrans forces’ attack by countering with one of his own, and the South nearly won a victory. But the North line stabilized, and after trying a second time to break through on Jan. 2, 1863, General Bragg decided to retreat.

Gettysburg and Vicksburg

In the spring of 1863, President Lincoln appointed another new commander for the Army of the Potomac: Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker was sure that he would succeed where his predecessors had failed. Over the winter, General Hooker reorganized his army, improved morale and prepared a campaign for the spring. In April, he pinned the Lee forces down behind Fredericksburg while he sent the bulk of his army on a lengthy flanking march upriver.

Once his forces were in place, General Hooker would have General Lee in a difficult position with enemy forces across the river to his front and in the wilderness area on his flank and rear. General Hooker expected General Lee to retreat, and most generals under similar circumstances would have done so. But General Lee saw an opportunity and he divided his own forces — twice — to send General Jackson on a flanking march of his own to roll up the North’s right. The Jackson attack was devastating, but in the process of pushing that attack past nightfall, General Jackson was shot and mortally wounded by his own men in the confusion of the fighting.

The Confederate victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville (May 2-3, 1863), again gave General Lee the initiative, and again he chose to invade the North. General Hooker quarreled with President Lincoln about how to respond to this push, and he was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, who took the Army north through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. The two armies met in the Battle of Gettysburg. where they fought a three-day battle (July 1-3, 1863) and the total casualties on both sides probably exceeded 50,000 men.

On the third day, General Lee hurled some 12,500 men at the center of the Union position in an attack that has gone down in history as “Pickett’s Charge,” though Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett’s Division formed only about a third of the assaulting force. After failing to achieve a breakthrough, General Lee withdrew back over the mountains and south to Virginia.

Near this moment, General Grant teamed with Rear Adm. David Dixon Porter to outflank the Confederate defenses at Vicksburg, Ms., the principal Confederate bastion on the Mississippi River. After running past the rebel batteries on April 16, the Porter gunboats ferried the Grant soldiers across the river south of Vicksburg so that Grant could approach the city from the east. After a brief and unsuccessful stand at Champion Hill (May 16, 1863) the Confederate Army under Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton fell back into prepared defenses around the city.

The rebel theater commander, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, urged General Pemberton to bring his army out of the city lest it be trapped there, join with his own small army and confront the Grant forces in the open. But General Pemberton knew that President Davis expected him to hold the city at all costs, and he decided to stay in the city. General Johnston believed he did not have a strong enough force to break the Grant siege. The Pemberton-led men endured 47 days with dwindling supplies until finally, on July 4 (the same day that General Lee began his retreat to Virginia), General Pemberton surrendered both the city and his 30,000-man army.

The victories by the North at Gettysburg and Vicksburg did not end the war, but they marked a new phase in the war, one in which the North’s forces seized and held the initiative. In hindsight, the summer of 1863 seemed to Southerners to have been the South’s high-water mark.

Total War

The disappointment of Gettysburg, and the disaster at Vicksburg, encouraged General Lee to allow General Longstreet to take two divisions from Virginia to reinforce the Western theater. General Longstreet’s men played a role in the Confederate victory at Chickamauga (Sept. 19-20, 1863) in northern Georgia, but the Confederates were unable to reap the strategic benefits of their tactical victory mainly because of quarreling between two of their generals, Longstreet and Bragg. Together they conducted a halfhearted siege of the North’s forces in Chattanooga before General Longstreet, with President Davis’s approval, went off to conduct a siege of his own at Knoxville.

Meanwhile, General Grant’s capture of Vicksburg marked for him even greater responsibilities, and in the fall of 1863 he took command of the besieged North army in Chattanooga. To break the siege and drive General Bragg’s army away from the city, the Grant forces first opened a supply line, then sent General Hooker (now in command of a Corps) against Lookout Mountain on Nov. 24, 1863. The capture of Lookout Mountain effectively lifted the siege, but General Bragg remained stubbornly in place on Missionary Ridge.

General Grant sent his favorite subordinate, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, against one end of the Confederate line on that ridge. When that attack stalled (thanks to the defensive prowess of Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne), General Grant directed the Army of the Cumberland, led by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, to make a demonstration against the center of the Bragg line to relieve the pressure on the Sherman forces. General Thomas’s men exceeded their orders and charged up Missionary Ridge on their own, putting the rebel army to flight (Nov. 25, 1863). After this, General Bragg’s dispirited army retreated southward into Georgia, and soon thereafter, General Grant came to Washington to take command of all Union armies.

Grant's Plan

In the spring of 1864, General Grant developed an overall plan that embraced a concept President Lincoln had been urging for years: the application of force at several places at the same time. By now, there were only two substantial field armies left in the Confederacy: General Lee’s bloodied but still dangerous Army of Northern Virginia, and the Army of Tennessee, now commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston after General Bragg’s sub-par performance at Chattanooga.

To defeat these forces, General Grant joined General Meade’s Army of the Potomac in Virginia and went after the Lee forces, while General Sherman, in command of three armies in Georgia, went after the Johnston troops. By coordinating their attacks, they would prevent the Confederates from sending reinforcements from one army to the other. At the same time, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler with the Army of the James would assault Richmond from the east (as the McClellan forces had done in 1862), Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel would march southward up the Shenandoah Valley, and Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks would attack Mobile on the Confederate Gulf Coast.

Consequently, the 1864 campaign depended entirely on the thrusts by General Grant in Virginia and General Sherman in Georgia. In the end, they were enough.

Virginia and Georgia

The two campaigns were very different in character. The fighting in Virginia, during what is known as the Overland Campaign, was a slugfest as each side hammered at the other in a series of battles from the Wilderness (May 4-7, 1864) and Spotsylvania (May 8-20, 1864) to Cold Harbor (June 3, 1864). During this 40-day period, the opposing forces suffered appalling casualties that totaled nearly 100,000 men: 60,000 from the North and 40,000 Confederates.

In Georgia, by contrast, both generals maneuvered cautiously, often avoiding battle. Only once did General Sherman start an all-out offensive against General Johnston — at Kennesaw Mountain (June 27, 1864) — with such poor results that he never did it again. The Johnston forces never attacked the Sherman troops at all. As a result, while the casualties in Virginia were staggering, those in Georgia were relatively modest (at least modest by the new standard of Civil War battles).

But the outcome of the two campaigns was much the same: General Lee was forced back inside the Richmond defenses; General Johnston was backed up to the outskirts of Atlanta. President Davis thought that General Johnston could have done more, and on July 17, 1864, the Confederate president dismissed his commander, replacing him with Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood.

Determined to restore the kind of mobility and maneuver that had characterized the war back in 1862, General Hood began a series of attacks against General Sherman’s superior forces at Peachtree Creek (July 20, 1864) and at Atlanta (July 22) in the hope of dealing the Sherman forces such a blow that they would be compelled to fall back northward. The Hood attacks won some short-term tactical advantages, but they also weakened his own army so that by September it was barely half the size of the army he had inherited. And once General Sherman had cut the Hood railroad lines in and out of Atlanta, General Hood had to evacuate the city anyway on Sept. 1.

That is when General Hood conjured up a truly desperate scheme: He planned to ignore General Sherman in Atlanta and “invade” Tennessee. After following him briefly, General Sherman let him go, sending General Thomas and Lt. Gen. John M. Schofield to take care of the Hood forces while General Sherman got ready for a march across Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah. The Hood army was roughly handled in the Battle of Franklin (Nov. 30, 1864) where he unleashed a foolish frontal assault that gained nothing but more casualties, and it was routed and almost completely destroyed by the Thomas Army of the Cumberland in the Battle of Nashville (Dec. 15, 1864).

Meanwhile, General Sherman moved across Georgia at will during his March to the Sea (Nov. 15 to Dec. 20, 1864), living partly off the land, and demonstrating the government’s absolute ability to dominate the countryside.

Surrender at Appomattox

General Sherman arrived in Savannah the week before Christmas, presenting President Lincoln with the city as “a Christmas present.” He then turned north and marched across South Carolina with the same dominant and devastating mastery as he had in Georgia. At Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, much of the city went up in flames, and scholars still argue about whether the destruction was deliberate or accidental. For his part, General Sherman was unapologetic, arguing that any and all destruction that resulted from the war belonged at the doorstep of those who had started it. Joseph Johnston, restored to command in this crisis of the Confederacy, fought one more battle against Sherman at Bentonville, N.C., on March 25, but he could do no more than slow down General Sherman’s inexorable advance.

While the Sherman forces moved north through the Carolinas, General Grant was stretching and testing the Lee entrenchments around Richmond and Petersburg. On April 1, 1865, the Grant men achieved a breakthrough at Five Forks, and General Lee knew he had to evacuate the city. His hope, a faint one, was somehow to link up with the Johnston small army in North Carolina and make one more stand. But he was cut off near Appomattox Court House and compelled to surrender on April 9. For his part, General Johnston surrendered to General Sherman near Durham Station, N.C., on April 26, and the war came to an end.

Dr. Craig L. Symonds is Professor Emeritus at the United States Naval Academy, from which he retired in 2005. The first person ever to win both the Naval Academy’s “Excellence in Teaching” award (1988) and its “Excellence in Research” award (1998), he also served as history department chair from 1988 to 1992, and received the Department of the Navy’s Superior Civilian Service medal three times. He served as professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., (1971-74) and at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England (1994-95). Symonds is the author of twelve books, including prize-winning biographies of Joseph E. Johnston (1992), Patrick Cleburne (1997), and Franklin Buchanan (1999), as well as The American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg (2001). Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (2005), won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize for Naval History. His 2008 book, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War, won the Barondess Prize, the Laney Prize, the Lyman Prize, and the Lincoln Prize for 2009. He also won the Nevins-Freeman Prize in 2009 and is co-author, with Harold Holzer, of "The New York Times Complete Civil War" book (2010). He and his wife, Marylou, live in Annapolis, Md. They have one son and one grandson.

Chronology of Coverage

Mar. 30, 2015

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University will announce it has bought one of largest private collections of 19th-century American photography from Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation; collection, which includes over 73,000 items, primarily features vast trove of Abraham Lincoln and Civil War-themed photographs. MORE

Mar. 23, 2015

Supreme Court will hear case Walker v Sons of Confederate Veterans, challenge to Texas decision to refuse to allow license plates that feature Confederate flag; case will consider limits of free expression and the meaning of the flag, which many associate with secession and slavery. MORE

Jan. 31, 2015

Civil War mural by artist James Walker will be stored at New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs after decades of being misidentified and bouncing from museum to museum. MORE

Nov. 28, 2014

Op-Ed article by Prof Ned Blackhawk recounts 1864 attack by Union armies on peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho villagers at Sand Creek in Colorado, in which nearly 200 women, children and older men were murdered; holds Civil War obscures campaigns like Sand Creek Massacre and other acts of ethnic cleansing against American Indians; calls for National Day of Indigenous Remembrance and Survival to commemorate those murdered at Sand Creek. MORE

Nov. 25, 2014

Sam Roberts examines little-known history of infiltration of Confederate saboteurs into New York City on Nov 25, 1864, where they started 19 fires in hotels, a theater and at P P T Barnum's Museum; destruction was in response to Union Army’s scorched earth campaign against Southern military installations and industrial sites; most of the fires fizzled and theater performance that included actor John Wilkes Booth went on. MORE

Nov. 15, 2014

Atlanta Journal; Atlanta erects historical marker annotating Civil War folklore surrounding Union Army Gen William T Sherman to reflect expanding body of forgiving scholarship about Sherman's rampage through Confederate South; marker is fruit of reassessment of Sherman and his tactics that has been decades in the making. MORE

Nov. 7, 2014

Pres Obama presents Medal of Honor to family of First Lt Alonzo H Cushing, Union soldier in Civil War who died at Battle of Gettysburg after standing up to fusillade of Confederate fire; hero receives nation's top military honor 151 years after his death. MORE

Aug. 28, 2014

First Lieutenant Alonzo H Cushing, who stood his ground against Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, will be awarded the Medal of Honor by Pres Obama; long delay in recognizing Cushing's contribution to what is arguably the most pivotal battle of the Civil War began with fact that at the time of his death, Medal of Honor was not awarded posthumously. MORE

May. 10, 2014

Civil War photograph taken in 1862 by Henry P Moore shows Union soldiers in a neat line, and in the background captures an early moment in baseball history. MORE

May. 6, 2014

Edward Rothstein reviews exhibit Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts and Context in the Civil War at New-York Historical Society. MORE

Mar. 20, 2014

Minnesota Historical Society tour St Paul After the Civil War examines life in the region after some 20,000 veterans returned home. MORE

Jan. 21, 2014

Exhibit Broken Bodies, Suffering Spirits, at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, documents physical trauma and injuries suffered by those involved in Civil War, as well as city of Philadelphia's role in treating wounded soldiers. MORE

Jan. 17, 2014

Olustee Journal; proposed Civil War monument to Union soldiers at Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park in Olustee, Fla, has enraged the area’s Confederate descendants; many Sons of Confederate Veterans view state's decision as betrayal of legacy of small park, which holds three monuments commemorating Confederate soldiers; Union soldiers lost Feb 1864 battle. MORE

Nov. 18, 2013

Editorial underscores the enduring power of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on eve of the anniversary of the speech; contends the speech is the pinnacle of American civic utterance. MORE

Nov. 17, 2013

For all of its famous brevity, the Gettysburg Address is not so simple or compact as it seems. MORE

Nov. 11, 2013

The filmmaker Ken Burns is starting a web project to encourage Americans to recite the Gettysburg Address. MORE

Sep. 5, 2013

Op-Ed article by Alex de Waal and Bridget Conley-Zilkic, members of World Peace Foundation, contends use of nerve gas in Syria is abhorrent but holds airstrikes will fail to protect civilians and will hinder peacemaking; cites warnings of 19th-century British diplomat Sir William Harcourt, who argued against Britain's intervention in American Civil War. MORE

Aug. 15, 2013

Since June, visitors at Governors Island National Monument have heard the roar of cannons during weekly firing demonstrations. MORE

Jul. 28, 2013

Look column presents photos of re-enactment of Battle of Gettysburg on its 150th anniversary in Gettysburg, Pa. MORE

Jul. 22, 2013

An almost-50-year-old memory of a short-lived show called “The Object Is” illustrates the place that objects have in history. MORE

Jul. 14, 2013

Op-Ed article by Jon Grinspan, doctoral candidate in history, describes way in which deadly riots in New York City in July 1863 were not just about Union Army's draft, but where also about race, class and politics. MORE

Jul. 9, 2013

Civil War re-enactors gather in Gettysburg over Fourth of July weekend to mark 150 years since Union troops won decisive battle that turned war in North's favor; strive to portray soldiers' lifestyles accurately, but some of them believe women and children should not participate in the re-creations because they were not part of the real thing. MORE

Jul. 6, 2013

Op-Ed article by Prof David T Z Mindich proposes that National Security Agency's data-mining program is not as unprecedented as some critics have maintained; cites extensive monitoring of telegraphs by federal government during Civil War; maintains first step toward regaining civil liberties is to end war on terror itself. MORE

Jul. 4, 2013

Vicksburg Journal; among modern-day residents of Vicksburg, Miss, site of bitter 47-day siege in 1863, it is hard to find many with strong feelings about the Civil War; folklore has it that for years, people of Vicksburg did not celebrate Fourth of July holiday because of bitterness over war. MORE

Jul. 3, 2013

Op-Ed article by author Robert Hicks explores importance of Civil War on occasion of three-day sesquicentennial of the Battle of Gettysburg; contends that events at Gettysburg bound United States into one nation. MORE

Jul. 2, 2013

David Brooks Op-Ed column memorializes 150th anniversary of Battle of Gettysburg, noting letters from Civil War soldiers recall profundities of loyalty and sacrifice; holds their sense of deep involvement with their country's destiny puts them in stark contrast to petty world of modern politics. MORE

Jun. 30, 2013

Emily Brennan travel article on 36-hour trip to Gettysburg, Pa for commemoration of 150th anniversary of Civil War's three-day Battle of Gettysburg. MORE

May. 26, 2013

Op-Ed article by author Jamie Malanowski calls for changing the names of military bases that are named after Confederate generals. MORE

Mar. 31, 2013

Ku Klux Klan rallies in Memphis to protest City Council's decision to rename three city parks that honored Confederate troops; no violence is reported and no arrests are made. MORE

Mar. 29, 2013

Memphis City Council’s decision to rename three public parks named after Confederate leaders sparks controversy in the face of a state bill that would make such renamings more difficult; Council says names evoked racist past and were unwelcoming in city where most of population is black; Southern historical groups say change dishonors Civil War troops. MORE

Mar. 21, 2013

Drum Barracks Civil War Museum near Los Angeles, Calif, tells little-known, but fascinating story of California in the Civil War; museum was constructed as military outpost in 1863 by Union troops to control the Western ports and keep them out of Confederate hands. MORE

Mar. 10, 2013

Todd Pitock travel article on road trip to Civil War battlegrounds and other historic sites around Pennsylvania and Virginia. MORE

Mar. 9, 2013

More than 500 people, including regiments of Civil War re-enactors, watch as two coffins carried by horse-drawn wagon are prepared for burial by 76-member ceremonial guard at Arlington National Cemetery; bodies are two unidentified sailors from warship Monitor, buried with full military honors 150 years after their ship sank off coast of Cape Hatteras, NC. MORE

Feb. 28, 2013

National Civil War Project is commemorating 150th anniversary of Civil War by pairing with performing arts organizations and universities to develop 12 new theatrical works about, or inspired by, the conflict, as well as scholarly and public presentations and student projects. MORE

Jan. 29, 2013

Researchers say they may have final clues in mystery of Confederate submarine M L Hunley, which never resurfaced after it became first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship in 1864. MORE

Jan. 5, 2013

Charles M Blow Op-Ed column, in light of recent movies set during the Civil War, considers the still-pernicious legacy of slavery in America; provides data showing that racist and misinformed ideas about the Civil War, and slavery, remain disturbingly prevalent. MORE

Jan. 1, 2013

Op-Ed article by history scholar Eric Foner on Abraham Lincoln's signing of Emancipation Proclamation in 1863; examines document's evolution during Civil War years, as well as evolution of Lincoln's thinking on abolishing slavery. MORE

Nov. 12, 2012

Discovery of almost perfectly preserved cellar containing artifacts from Civil War under construction site in Fredericksburg, Va, has astonished archaeologists due to its pristine state. MORE

Aug. 25, 2012

More than decade-old fight over a stolen bust honoring contentious Civil War Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest continues in Selma, Ala, with protesters trying to block construction of a new monument; dispute has revived thorny issues about race, history and identity in the city, which is known for a landmark civil rights clash between marchers and police in 1965. MORE

Jun. 11, 2012

Jim Downs, author and assistant professor of history at Connecticut College, has written book Sick From Freedom in which he describes the public health crisis faced by many slaves liberated by the Civil War; says that historians must look beyond military casualties and consider the huge numbers of slaves who sickened and died after the Emancipation Proclamation in order to understand the impact of the war. MORE

Jun. 3, 2012

Travel Q&A with The Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates, who travels to historical Civil War battlefields. MORE

Apr. 3, 2012

Landmark study by historian J David Hacker in journal Civil War History revises long-held estimate of deaths in the Civil War upward by 20 percent, from 618,222 to 750,000; Hacker, a demographic historian, combed through newly digitized census data from the 19th century; his revised figure is already winning acceptance from scholars, and the publishing journal calls his work among the most consequential pieces ever to appear in its pages. MORE

Mar. 25, 2012

Sylviane Gold reviews exhibit Colts & Quilts: The Civil War Remembered at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford (Metropolitan/Connecticut). MORE

Dec. 6, 2011

Edward Rothstein Critic's Notebook examines how the Museum of the Confederacy and the Virginia Historical Society, both in Richmond, Va, present slavery and the Civil War. MORE

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On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to an appellate ruling that Texas had discriminated against the Sons of Confederate Veterans by rejecting a proposed novelty license plate featuring a Confederate Flag.